ProSites - Affordable Web Sites for Small Businesses

We don't often promote individual ProSites -- our affordable Web sites for small businesses -- here at the flyte blog, but every once in a while it's nice to list some of the companies that are now using the ProSites.

• Maine Custom Woodlands - A full service timber harvesting, land management and excavation company.
• Alan Shaver - Candidate for trustee of the Episcopal Church Pension Fund.
• Psychological Associates of Northern Jersey - A multi-disciplinary partnership of mental health professionals in northern NJ.
• Business Etiquette Institute - Margie Kelly, a business etiquette consultant.
• Reduce My College Costs - A resource-rich Web site for parents of college-bound children looking to save money on tuition.

All of these sites are built on the WordPress platform, allowing our clients to update their Web site without any HTML knowledge or expensive 3rd party software. Just a modern browser is all they need to keep their Web site fresh and smelling like springtime.

Rich Brooks
Small Business Web Sites

Muscle Cars and Classic Cars at Portland Motor Club

We're just about ready to launch a Web site for the Portland Motor Club, a classic car storage facility in Portland, Maine. In the meantime, they hosted an event with the Portland Museum of Art showing off a collection of classic cars and sent over an invitation.

I rallied from my sick bed (cough!) and brought my camera down to PMC's brand new building to take some photos. Enjoy! If you have trouble viewing this you can check it out at Flickr, too.

Rich Brooks
Portland Maine Web Design

Photos from Harbor Fish Market, Portland, Maine

Tonight's my last class of Introduction to the SLR at the University of Southern Maine, and we're having a critique of our photos. This kind of snuck up on me, but luckily my friends over at Harbor Fish Market were kind enough to let me come in and take some photos for class.

What's so cool about Harbor Fish Market is that it's a real fish market, not a tourist trap. As you can (hopefully) see from the photos, the fish is incredibly fresh and high quality; people and restaurants from around the country order from Harbor Fish.

Entering the retail store is a blast. The floors are uneven and a bit wet...you have to watch your step! Giant lobster tanks line one wall, and local and fish from around the world lay displayed on ice. Unlike some other fish markets in town, the prices are very reasonable, and the people who work there are very real, very cool, and very authentic.

There's a slide show below of some of the other photos I took. If anything looks appetizing you can have fresh, Maine seafood delivered to your door for dinner tomorrow. Just call 1-800-370-1790 x2 and ask for my good friend Robyn. She'll treat you right.

Rich Brooks
Fishing for Compliments

The Irreverent Widow - Expressions of Grief w/a Side of Humor

Irreverent. Widow. They're not two words that you might imagine go side by side. Yet, Sandi Amorello seems to make them work.

Sandi came to us a few months ago to help her build a Web site to promote The Irreverent Widow Project: art, writing and exhibits that represent her artistic expression of coming to terms with the death of her husband, Drew, and her subsequent exploration into "midlife courtship."

The site is filled with Sandi's irreverent sense of humor, stories (rated with 1 - 5 tissue boxes), and examples of her art. Much of her stories are free, although she does have stories you can purchase, and will have the first of three books coming soon.

Sandi has also started an Irreverent Widow Blog, and can be found tossing clever bon mots in my general direction over at Twitter where her handle is @sandiamorello.

Flyte designed and built the site on WordPress, the popular open-source blogging/content management system platform. This allows Sandi to update not just her blog, but any page on her Web site without any HTML knowledge and without additional software.

Rich Brooks
WordPress Web Design

Business Etiquette Institute: Proper Manners in a Blue Jeans World

We generally don't promote our ProSites--our affordable Web sites for small business--when they launch, but in this case I feel that would just be bad manners.

I first met Margie Kelly when she took my Web Marketing for Entrepreneurs course over at the University of Southern Maine. After the course was over, she approached me and asked if I would be interested in develop a Web site for her business; teaching business manners in a blue jeans world.

If you ever have the pleasure of meeting Margie, you'll know there was no way I could say no to her. She's sweet, with a great southern accent, and impeccably polite. (No surprise, there.) She exudes warmth and charm and it's a pleasure to do business with her.

Visitors to her site can learn about business attire (blue jeans or Brooks Brothers), dining skills, and wedding etiquette. There's also a business etiquette faq.

The idea of business manners and etiquette may seem out of date if all you're thinking about is which fork to use. However, Margie has worked with giant corporations and camp staff to help them greet parents the right way. She's helped CEOs and people looking for a new job who are struggling with the interview process.

We invite you to check out her business etiquette Web site.

Rich Brooks
Affordable Web Site Design

Recreational Boating and Yachting Blogs

A few weeks ago I met with the folks from Sabre Yachts and Back Cove Yachts to help develop a social media and Web marketing strategy, and to reinvigorate their blogs. I had some time today as the flood of emails has abated over the past couple of days and Twitter is experiencing major down time. I was really impressed with what I saw.

Both the Sabre Yachts Blog and the Back Cove Blogs are being regularly updated and have a good mix of different types of posts. There's photos, videos, and great content. What's best is that their passion for recreational boating is really starting to show through.

At the Sabre blog readers are treated to first hand experience with the Zeus drives, which allow incredible control from a joystick. (Heck, even I can pilot a yacht if you give me a joy stick!) There's also information about upcoming boat shows and calls-to-action about pending legislation that affects recreational boaters.

Over at the Back Cove Yacht blog there's some funny posts about boaters' superstitions and plants that do well on boats...I would have thought this was somehow related to hydroponics, but no.

This blog also weighs in on underwater lights (think back to those neon lights under pimped out cars, but in the water), and also has some nice video of lobster boat racing.

If you're a recreational boater, or have been thinking of getting a boat or yacht, you owe it to yourself to check out the Sabre Yachts Blog and the Back Cove Blog.

It's the next best thing to being out on the water!

Rich Brooks
Blogs for Business

Blogging Repairs

Friend, client and fellow blogger Annie Mahle is using her blog Maine Adventure Sails for an interesting and bittersweet purpose: she's documenting the repair work that's being done on the Schooner J&E Riggin.

A couple of teenagers vandalized their ship a few months back by cutting the lines and the Riggin floated under a ramp. The tide came in and wedged the Riggin under the ramp, causing lots of damage to her.

The Riggin has a lot of fans out there--in fact I interviewed Annie on how small businesses can use a street team to market themselves a few months back. The blog is the perfect tool for the Riggin's captains to keep their customers abreast of the situation, showing lots of photos of the reconstructive work.

For photos and details, be sure to check out the Maine Adventure Sails Blog.

Rich Brooks
Blog Consultant

Do Blogs Work For Small Business?

Almost a month ago I posted to my blog at MaineToday.com Can Blogging Help Maine's Tourism Industry? One commenter questioned whether blogging makes any impact on a business, while another said he had experienced a lot more business because of blogging. The bottom line is, results differ for a number of reasons:

• Frequency of posts
• Search engine visibility
• Competition
• Time of year
• Audience
• and so on.

Although I've found blogging to be the most rewarding of all the Web marketing activities we do, it can be time consuming. (Here are some tips, courtesy of Copyblogger, for those of you who have trouble finding the time to blog.)

More than once, I've seen business bloggers with the best of intentions slow their posts down to a crawl because they aren't seeing immediate results based on the amount of work they are putting in. Unfortunately, at the beginning, you'll be doing a lot more work and getting a lot fewer results than you would like. (But isn't that how everything rewarding is?) However, over time, those two results will begin to reverse.

I'd like to share with you an (unsolicited) email I recently received from Gray Cabaniss who writes the Agatha and Louise Blog, a blog that supports his retail and online shops that sell gifts and products for dog owners and dog lovers:

YouTube Marketing: A Man and His Tuba

As I blog this, I'm listening to George Gershwin's Second Piano Prelude being performed as a piano/tuba duet...by just one person! That person happens to be the über-talented Dr. Eli Newberger.

Besides being a world-renown pediatrician and author of The Men They Will Become, Dr. Newberger is also an accomplished jazz tuba player. (I have several of his CDs at home.)

When he recently sent us some videos to add to his Web site, we suggested that we establish a YouTube channel for Dr. Newberger as well. The channel can be found under the headings of "musician" and "jazz". (We should add "tuba" as well.) This will allow YouTube surfers to find him when they look in these categories, or do a related search. Appropriate, keyword-rich titles and descriptions of each video have already attracted dozens of new visitors in just a few hours.

Now that Google has absorbed the ever-expanding YouTube library into their Video Search, Dr. Newberger's content will reach a wider audience who may not have discovered the video library on his website.

Using YouTube freed up hundreds of megabytes of storage space for Dr. Newberger, and created at least 8 new pages that link to his Web site, helping his search engine rankings. Also YouTube uses Flash viewer for their videos, meaning that 98% of visitors can watch the movie without downloading a plugin. No other video format is that pervasive on the Web.

So, take a few minutes and check out George Gershwin's Second Piano Prelude, or Perdido Street Blues, or any of the other Dr. Newberger videos on YouTuba.

Thanks to Jonathan who put this together.

And, to Ron Burgundy, wherever you may be, know this: jazz tuba is way cooler that jazz flute.

Rich Brooks
This One Time, At Band Camp...

 

Fix Your Marketing Blog is TypePad's Blog of the Day!

I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate our friends (and business blog consulting clients) Katie Sternberg and Allison Kurpius of The Marketing Source...their blog, the Fix Your Marketing Blog, was named one of TypePad's Featured Blogs today.

TypePad calls their blog "a castle of contemporary marketing wisdom with room after room of tools and resources for your perusal." Wow!

TP goes on to say:

[Katie and Allison] stress two things above all: don't waste your marketing dollars and it is imperative to build a clear strategic marketing plan. Get an overview of current trends and Internet marketing while refreshing your memory with tips on traditional standbys like market research and customer service. You will walk away with a carriage of do-it-yourself marketing ideas, and a plan of action that begins with signing up to receive their free white paper, Marketing Plan or Marketing Mess?

I know I just blogged about them the other day, but if you're a small business or non-profit looking for great marketing advice, be sure to check out the Fix Your Marketing Blog.

If you're looking for help in designing, developing or promoting your own business blog, turn to the folks The Marketing Source turned to...flyte! (Did that come on too strong? Sorry.)

Rich Brooks
Business Blog Consulting